Palm (of PalmPilot) Is Back With a Tiny Phone...for Your Phone

If you don't remember the PalmPilot, there's a good chance your parents do: The personal digital assistant (PDA) unveiled in 1997 became a must-have for the tech-obsessed crowd, and paved the way for the full-screen smartphones and virtual assistants we rely on today—all before Palm, Inc. faded in 2011. Well, it's back...sort of. Having acquired licensing rights to the dormant Palm brand, a pair of entrepreneurs today unveiled the new Palm, an elegant and sleek credit card-sized phone that works with your main phone to help you spend less time on your phone. ... "Um, what?" you ask? Hear us out: It's actually kind of cool and could be the travel-friendly device we've been waiting for.

To understand what Palm is, you first need to understand what it's not: namely, a baby phone that will replace your gargantuan iPhone XS Max. The Palm is meant to be a companion to your main phone, an on-the-go tool that allows you to leave that digital lifeline at home while you work out or at the Airbnb while you explore a new city, but still stay connected to the outside world. It's the Zodiac to your cruise ship, the escape pod to your Star Destroyer. Its appeal, therefore, is in its simplicity. It has a full data connection with the same phone number as your primary device, enabled using Verizon NumberShare (the Palm is being launched exclusively through Verizon), and it functions on Android. (It will also work with an iPhone, but not as seamlessly since it depends on Play Store apps.)

But its 3.3-inch screen—and therefore tiny app icons and tiny keyboard—makes it hard to write full-on work emails or an epic Twitter thread, and that's the point. Think of it as a smart watch with a few more capabilities. (Ever try making a phone call on a watch? Not fun and you look very dumb doing it.) It can track your workouts and is made of sturdy Gorilla Glass while also being water- and dust-resistant; it can also basically do everything your main phone can, too. It notably has cameras—a 12-megapixel lens on the rear and an 8-megapixel front-facing selfie cam—both good enough to keep up with Instagram.

An easy-to-use Android interface allows you to load up the apps you really need and access them when you actually need them.

Courtesy Palm

The real push here is on "Life Mode," both a device function and a company ethos, according to Palm's founders, Dennis Miloseski and Howard Nuk. Life Mode is basically "Do Not Disturb" on steroids. When Life Mode is enabled, not only will the Palm go dark, but it will also shut off any signal until you unlock it (using a facial recognition unlocking system, similar to the latest generation of smart phones). The exact settings of Life Mode are customizable, but the idea is that you can shut off notifications for every Slack message, work email, and text that comes through, and you won't even see what you've missed until you decide to unlock the Palm and re-enter the digital world.

In press materials for the Palm—and in a briefing from Miloseski and Nuk last week—the device has been put forward as the kind of thing you could keep in your gym bag (Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors is an investor and the "creative strategy director" of the company), mount on your bicycle for a workout, or use during nights out so you can hang out with your friends instead of glancing at your phone every five minutes. But the utility for travelers is actually huge. With the Palm, you could ostensibly leave the oversized, $1,000 phone in your hotel room safe and slip the Palm into your shirt pocket for a day out in Vienna. You'd have what you need a swipe away—Google Maps, CNTraveler.com—but you could actually spend more time in the present and less time staring at Instagram or mindlessly refreshing your email. Put it into Life Mode and the battery also gets extended beyond the regular eight hours, a huge boost when you're on the road and can't easily plug in.

If the idea of buying another $349 device to help you spend less time on your devices seems contradictory, you're not alone. But it's not unprecedented: Both Apple and Google have started rolling out features in their latest operating systems that allow you to limit the amount of time you spend on certain apps. The Palm isn't about going full-on Luddite, an urge all travelers have undoubtedly had when they're somewhere new, but it's actually a pretty good compromise. Its lightweight, stylish, and tiny form—in a world where the line between phone and tablet is increasingly blurred,—just make it all the more appealing.